I had my annual professional review recently. This is where staff in the University have a meeting with a senior colleague to discuss what they have done and where they are going. Naturally, given the success of HTTLAM I put on my review form that I would like to write another book. Perhaps not surprisingly this was the main thing my reviewer wanted deleted from my plans. The idea is that I should be getting on with my research rather than wasting time producing books. So the suggestion of a new book was crossed off the review form. 

Maybe I should quote G.H. Hardy at this point

Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. [...] It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. – A Mathematician’s Apology

I guess that there will be no new books for a while…

The mathematician Walter Ledermann has dies. There has been a Times obituary and a better one in the Independent.

Ledermann was very influential in my undergraduate learning. I used his book on Group Theory to learn the subject and the series of books he edited, and in some cases wrote, called the Library of Mathematics was great. Each book was a pocket-sized summary of some subject such as mathematical analysis, multiple integrals or complex analysis. The books left out a lot of the clutter and so it was possible to see what was really important in the area.

Needless to say he was influential in my writing of How to Think Like a Mathematician.

A link to an interesting article on making science fun: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jun/16/science-lessons-inspiration

As part of my research into map projections I came across a blog on strange maps: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

I particularly liked Pogue States (to do with songs by the Pogues) and the World War II: If maps could fight (a history of WWII).

Have to rewrite a grant application and produce a new one too. The details of why are too complicated to get into but it does mean that this week will be very busy. Next week even more so (for different reasons). But – hopefully – the week after I will get cracking with next phase of HTTLAM: the new video. 

Also, I need to be thinking about the next book project. I have two good ideas to do with geometry. Maybe I’ll do both…

I’m in Valencia, Spain for the first Workshop on Singularities in Generic Geometry.

So far I’ve only seen the hotel as it was night when I arrived!

It would seem that I can’t hype my book up the Amazon charts:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/23/algorithms-internet-google-amazon-itunes

Nice to see an article about mathematics in the national press though.

An obituary for Douglas Keen of Ladybird books.

I haven’t posted for a number of weeks. This is not because I have grown bored of the blog already. No, it’s much more basic than that – I haven’t had time! Why? Well, I had decided my blog would not contain too much of my personal life since I’m sure not very few people are interested but I couldn’t let this event go without mention!

My wife Carol gave birth to our daughter Clara Pinheiro Houston on 5 September 2008 at 1.25am. Here’s a cute picture

Clara